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Dr Toni Bunnell, a hedgehog expert, has claimed the loveable garden critters are a dying breed and could be extinct within 15 years.

Hedgehogs could soon be extinct with numbers dropping at a rate of 25 per cent a year (Picture: PA)

Dr Bunnell claims the number of hedgehogs in Britain has decreased by 25 per cent over the last 10 years.

The causes she lists for this decline include pesticides eliminating scores of caterpillars and beetles – insects that hedgehogs feed on – as well as mowing, being caught in netting and fences and even drowning in garden ponds as they make their way from one garden to the next looking for food.

As they tend to share their habitats with predatory badgers in rural areas of the UK, the pricklier of the species is losing out.

Dr Bunnell’s studies have also found that the hogs were being run over by vehicles at a rate of 50,000 a year.

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This research comes at a time when red squirrels, natterjack toads and cuckoos have all been tipped to become extinct within the next five to ten years if current trends continue.

However, Dr Bunnell, who runs a hedgehog sanctuary in Holgate, said hedgehog number could be preserved by using wildlife-friendly slug pellets as opposed to pesticides, and providing the creatures with food and water.